Glass
by Travithian Axile
Summary: Based slightly on the manga. Oneshot, prequel to the series. Sparda's family finds peace but the demons won't let themselves be forgotten. When a demon calls...


Disclaimer: Own nothing, nothing at all…:(

A Word From the Author: This is going to be my last fic for a while, DMC or otherwise, because of the exam period. Until late November, I'll stop updating absolutely. See you then and goodbye for now.

Summary: Another take on Eva's death. Based very very slightly on the manga. I It's quiet, and the boys shouldn't have anything to fear. But vengeance has a nasty knack of turning up when you aren't looking…

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**DEVIL MAY CRY:**

**GLASS**

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It was winter morning, cold and pale and bright, frost glittering like white clusters of diamonds at spines and leaves and at the window. The air hung cool and heavy, and when he breathed it in it pierced and cut like a silver knife. The watery sun barely illuminated the gray sky, more an ornament than anything else. The chill hurt his throat as he drew in another breath, in and out, clouding the clear glass.

The house was silent, save for the low hum of the radiator as it tried and failed to drive back the winter's assault. If he closed his eyes he could imagine that he was alone on the frozen landscape, with the pines thrusting up like dark needles into the drifting skies. There was something oddly compelling about that thought; something about the pristine beauty of the winter scene, the blanket of snow soft as feathers and deceptively warm, lying untouched and perfect before him, shimmering like a mirage in the weak sunlight.

Alone he savored his solitude, so rarely enjoyed, before the morning fully asserted his dominance over the world and brought his family out of bed. He turned away, and did not see the dark shadow that crept over the rim of his precious vista and spread like an illness over the smooth curve of the slope, tearing ragged scars into the snow. As it passed, a vague shimmering overlaid the air, vague distortions marking its wake, subtly warping the feel and shape of everything. The sun glared like a swollen, fiery eye, blurring into three, one, three. The aura of the _thing _ lashed out with grasping tendrils, dragging everything it touched into itself and spitting them back out changed and tainted.

And _it _beheld the house, fragile and vulnerable in its inky shadow, a lone victim shrinking away from the horror before it. The newcomer grinned, touched the tip of its teeth with a long sinuous tongue. Grinned, and struck.

The glass burst inward in a deadly, shining shower. They sliced through his back and wrenched out of his flesh wet and red-slick. Numbly he raised a hand to his terrible wounds. Then he screamed, helplessly, as the pain crept up and pounced over the borders of his mind into full, flaring comprehension.

He did not hear the beast clamber in, pulling its heavy, sleek body through the jagged frame, or its feet pad over the fallen glass. But he did feel, and see, the great white claw, marbled with black veins, come up before his face tauntingly and rip through his throat.

He felt, suddenly, cold.

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.. 

The scream shattered her sleep, a well-wielded blade with an undeniable edge of terror that brought her fully awake and broke her dreams. They swirled away from her like gossamer ghosts as she pulled a robe on and threw the door open, flung herself at the landing so hard she almost fell over. The stench reached her as fast as the sight did, the great crimson pool of blood splattering all over the wall and onto the table. Her son, her serious, scholarly son, lay on the floor with his cheek pressed against the gore. The scene screamed violence at her.

The demon crouched at his side, a thing formed by nightmares, of a form so fantastic it beguiled the mind and left only the impression of something terrible and cruel beyond description, flashing amber eyes and white claws which streamed blood. His blood. As though suddenly alerted, it twitched its head up, spearing her with its inhuman eyes, wide and pupil less, all burning glare and raw power. A spreading smile added long teeth to its macabre visage, and she recoiled. Its intent was all too clear. She backed away, biting back the bitter tears that stung the back of her mouth like acid and ran, ran from the stark message written below in her son's blood, a message of sworn vengeance that had taken a decade but had, ultimately, found them.

_Dante!_

He was already flinging off his covers, staring at her with wide, frightened eyes. He was young and tousled and wholly innocent, and all she wanted to do was to hold him until it went away. But this was no bad dream, no childish fantasy to laugh at and chase away; this was real, as real as the corpse of his twin that sprawled downstairs.

She did not tell him the truth, for she was afraid of it, and even more afraid of what it might do to him. But he already knew, somehow, and did not ask for his brother as she led him away, inexplicably silent and grimly knowing.

"Hide," she told him then, even as the steps of the beast shook the house and sent cracks blooming in a widening spiderweb through the walls, and books rattling off their shelves; "No matter what, you must hide, Dante! Never come out! _No matter what!_"

_You cannot hide, _the demon-beast whispered, and the very foundations shuddered at the mere sound of its mind-voice. The air carried its lingering echoes, obediently. _Cannot cannot cannot can't. Hide. _

He reached out his hands to her in a mute appeal. "Mother," he said. "No. Not this way."

She slapped him, hard. The force of the blow spun him sideways into the wall. He looked at her with betrayed eyes and she looked back, coldly, derisively, and he was reminded of his father's stories of her, the fiery, beautiful warrior-woman with a heart and soul of marble. Then her expression crumbled, and the impression was gone. Her sad eyes bid him farewell, and she turned back just as the wall exploded. The floor rocked and deep lines scored the concrete, stones and rubble flying to herald the demon's advent.

And she stood, proud, anguished, as the demon shouldered in, her golden hair whipping around her white shoulders in the wake of the chaos.

_Sparda's woman, _the demon greeted, almost reverentially. Rubble shifted and cracked beneath its large feet. The moment slowed down, all movement minute and frozen, and her vision sharpened to pick out the tiny white particles floating in the air, lazily shifting downwards—

—And then it all sped up again, as the demon hissed, _Lord Mundus sends his regards…human… _and drove huge talons into her torso with impossible grace and speed. She gasped, and felt liquid trailing down her chin. Supported only by its claws, she gathered the last of her fading strength to stare straight into its hot amber eyes and struggled to speak, her words as much a message for Mundus as for her surviving son. "No…regrets…" she breathed. One last, rasping word. "Sparda…"

Then she died, courageous to the end, a human woman from a distant time who had loved the darkest of demons and remade him into a man. And he tried to follow her example, her brave lead, and watched with aching eyes that longed for tears, even as her blood soaked into his clothes and hair, still warm from her dead heart.

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There was a pain in his throat, a burning, prickling pain that itched and stung. It throbbed and ebbed as he pushed himself to his feet, nearly slipping in the blood that liberally decorated the room. He remembered, and wished he hadn't, the memory of that last, terrible moment branding itself into his mind with painful clarity.

_I am not dead. _He thought this to reassure himself. _But you should have been! _Logic cried out. He blocked it out, because it did not matter. Only _she _mattered. Gagging, he braced itself against the wall, began the long, agonizing journey up the stairs.

Then he heard the Voice.

It came from a million places and none, from the void behind the stars and the abyss before Creation; from the dark hating voice that haunted civilized mankind and the dark forgotten corners of time. It was cold as the breath in a man's lungs before he froze to death, and it was as alluring as the perfect silence of the final death to a tormented mind. He heard it, and it snapped right in and fit perfectly in a place he had not known existed, deep and ancient and primal. For a moment, he did not understand the words, entranced as he was.

_Yes. They are all dead. Sparda's woman. _All _of them._

From stillness came grief. From grief came the rage. The birth of a new scream shredded his throat. He shivered; his skin felt suddenly too tight, too painful—his heartbeat intensified, pounding like the footfalls of titans in his ears. "No," he said, his voice flowing, thickening, deepening. Changing. "_No."_

The second stretched and broke apart, and the bestial rage took form and tore free, in a spray of blood that turned him inside out.

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The cry was like nothing he had ever heard before. It embodied loss and utter, wrenching sorrow, resonating with his own churning emotions. But it was also anger, and hate, drenched in tears. He did not recognize the voice.

The demon turned its massive head, and the shadow sprang, a streak of glowing blue that spat blood and wrath. They fell upon each other eagerly, locked in a deadly lover's embrace, claws and fangs flashing silver. He shrank back, afraid in a way he could not name. For a brief instant, their eyes met through the flurry; human and pale blue, demonic white. Then the two combatants were gone, as though they had never been.

He crawled out from the crack that had served as his temporary haven; crawled to her side, even when he knew there was no hope; no life. But still he touched her and called to her, and kept calling for an answer that would never come, and

there was only the falling dust, the terrible, yawning silence, and her staring eyes.

**_end of Glass._

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